Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France Paperback by Robert Darnton

Product Details

• Publisher: Harvard University Press (1986-01-01)
• Language: English
• Paperback: 232 pages
• ISBN-13: 9780674569515
• Item Weight: 368.55 grams
• Dimensions: 0.0 x 0.0 x 0.0 cm

“[An] excellent and exemplary study in the history of ideas…Provides a commendable model for those interested in the way ‘true’ and ‘false’ ideas interact and broadly influence behavior.” —Science

Early in 1788, Franz Anton Mesmer, a Viennese physician, arrived in Paris and began to promulgate a somewhat exotic theory of healing that almost immediately seized the imagination of the general populace. Robert Darnton, in his lively study of mesmerism and its relation to eighteenth-century radical political thought and popular scientific notions, provides a useful contribution to the study of popular culture and the manner in which ideas are diffused down through various social levels.

About the Author

Robert Darnton is the author of numerous award-winning books on French cultural history, including The Revolutionary Temper. A MacArthur Fellow, chevalier in the Légion d’honneur, and winner of the National Humanities Medal and the National Book Critics Circle Award, Darnton is the Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the University Library, Emeritus, at Harvard University.